Ride – Leave Them All Behind

I still maintain that Ride were impossibly beautiful. They may have spotted and converted ideas being flouted with great success elsewhere but the noise they produced was all of their own making. What appealed most to young men leaving their teens for the big bad world of adulthood was the sense that their melodies were cosseted so deeply inside the maelstrom of noise it would keep those casual music fans at bay. But then nobody reckoned on ‘Going Blank Again’ rewriting the Oxford quartet’s rulebook, delivering what was undeniably their ‘Bends’, an album of heartthrobs dressed up as magnificent indie anthems. I don’t think I will ever shake their performance of opening track ‘Leave Them All Behind’ on the C4 programme the Word (see here) because it defined what still sets the early 90’s apart from what has followed in its wake. There are probably about a dozen bona-fide Ride classics with this song chief among them, it is exhilaration set to music. KD